27 October 2011 11:40 PM

The moderate fanatics of the Islamist Winter

It gets worse by the day. The lunacy of the west, that is, as the world teeters towards the precipice.

The ‘Arab Spring’ is turning just about everywhere into an Islamist winter. Libya has gone Islamist, with its new administration declaring that sharia law will rule. Sharia law is fundamentally anti-democratic, and Islamist theocratic regimes which adhere to its precepts are fundamentally anti-west.

As previously observed here, one terrifying result of the fall of the Gaddafy regime has been the loss of some 20,000 Libyan shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles. Some of these missiles have reportedly made their way into Gaza and Somalia. Ha’aretz reports:

‘The United States is also worried by the developments. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited Libya last week, announced the U.S. would grant the new Libyan regime millions of dollars in aid in an attempt to fight the arms smuggling. American experts expressed their fears in particular over the transfer of shoulder-launched missiles to terrorists, and said the aid was intended to allow the Libyans to locate where such weapons are stored - and destroy them.’

Rub your eyes. The US, which along with the UK and France is in large measure responsible for the fall of Gaddafy and thus the loss of those 20,000 missiles, is paying the Islamist regime in Libya millions of dollars to ‘find’ and destroy their missing weapons in Gaza and Somalia? Hillary Clinton thinks the Libyans can actually do that? How?

Or is the aid maybe to enable the Libyans to locate the ones that are left in Libya and destroy them? But what guarantee is there that Libya will use this money to do this? Why should the Islamist Libyan regime want to stop Hamas from hitting Israel, or Somali Islamists from attacking the west? To remind everyone once again -- Abdelhakim Belhadj, commander of the military forces in Tripoli, was a senior member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a radical Islamic terrorist organization, which until recently held a world view rather similar to that of al Qaeda.

And here is an example of the new US, UK and French-backed Libyan regime’s attitude towards Jews:

‘One can learn about the atmosphere on the Libyan street from the hostile and antisemitic public reaction to the arrival of Dr. David Gerbi in Tripoli in early October. Gerbi, who was born in Libya and fled to Italy in 1967 out of fear of harm to the Jewish community after the Six-Day War, visited the synagogue in Tripoli and asked to repair it. Upon learning of the synagogue visit, the National Transitional Council was quick to remove him from the synagogue, arguing that he was not authorized to enter the complex, which is under the authority of the Department of Archaeology. At the same time, many demonstrations were held in Tripoli calling to prevent any Jewish presence in Libya or the establishment of synagogues in the country. The National Transitional Council did not prevent this expression of antisemitism and did not condemn it, nor was there any objection to this by other political factions in Libya.’

Is Hillary Clinton completely out to lunch?

Then there is Tunisia. Received opinion in the west is that moderates have now come to power there. But the Islamist Nahda Party won last Sunday’s elections, if not by an outright majority, while the anti-Islamist Progressive Democratic Party did far worse than expected.

The Nahda party was founded in 1981 by Rachid al-Ghannouchi. Its motto was the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto, ‘Islam is the solution.’ After the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali last January, Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia from more than two decades in exile. (Guess where? Yup, Londonistan -- where else?)

‘Now that Rashid Ghannouchi’s Nahda party is raking in the voters in the Tunisian elections, I'm reminded of a quote from him that I brought back in May: “I bring glad tidings that the Arab region will get rid of the germ of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Hamas movement, once said that Israel would disappear before 2027. That date may be too far off; Israel may disappear before that.” Very moderate.’

‘...[Ghannouchi] was also quoted during a visit to Iran as saying, “The greatest danger to civilization, religion and world peace is the United States Administration. It is the Great Satan.” In respect to Israel, there is this unpleasantness: “There are no civilians in Israel. Men, women and children, they are all reserve soldiers and can therefore be killed.”

‘Ghannouchi has long been an ardent supporter of Hamas. His biographer is a Palestinian by the name of Azzam Tamimi, who recently said something to which we should pay close attention. He remarked that the real struggle of the future is “going to be about who is Islamist and who is more Islamist, rather than about the secularists and the Islamists.”’

The Arab and Muslim world is falling like dominoes to Islamism. There is no such thing as ‘moderate Islamism’. It’s as absurd as saying there were moderate and extreme Stalinists, or moderate and extreme Nazis, or moderate and extreme proponents of the Spanish Inquisition. You cannot have moderate fanatics.

Since Islamism is the fanatical doctrine which aims to replace secular by theocratic rule and democracy and human rights by submission to Islam, we can see that the ‘democratic’ Arab Spring hymned by western leaders and leftist intellectuals is in fact a mortal threat to democracy and the west. But then these are the leaders and intellectuals who sanitise or support the racist and genocidal fanatics of Hamas and Fatah, connive at the spread of Islamism at home and denounce all who try to sound the alarm as ‘Islamophobes’.

Well, very soon no more excuses or alibis will be possible. The revolutionary extremism that has progressively taken over Arab and Muslim society is throwing off its camouflage and its constraints. We are caught up in a gathering war of the world -- and yet all western leaders can do is gibber inanities as they lurch ever more wildly into submission.

Where, oh where is our Churchill?

An earlier version of the blog post "The moderate fanatics of the Islamist winter" referred to allegations made by another blogger that Rashid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Tunisian political party An Nahda, had threatened to hang political opponents Raja bin Salama and Lafif Lakhdar. The allegation was untrue, it was removed when we were informed that was the case and we apologise for any distress caused to Mr Ghannouchi.

Comments

@Libya . Reda
Live and let live? So when they hang homosexuals in Iran, are they ignorant of Islam or are they flouting it? I take no comfort in assurances as to the mores of the majority of muslims, when the minority take power and behave as supremacists.

Why is it that there is such fear with no basis to it at all. The above article embraces everything that it purports to hate, intolerance of the way of life of others. Islam is clear on the principle of live and let live and this is seen in the lives of the majority of muslims here in the UK and abroad, such as Libya. Seriously poor scaremongering.

Hillary, Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy need to stop behaving like teenagers, nothing is going to change in Libya and those other countries, if this leaders want to involve and want to introduce democracy or freedom to people in Africa or Arabia they should first practise in here, to see how democracy is working Cameron should go for a promenade in Bethnal Green or Mile End London.

In 'Why Civilizations Fail' the writer observes a totally new phenomenon, first appearing in the last five years -- the collapse of birth rates among 'Muslims'! There are other 'fin de civilisation' signifiers cropping up as well, i.e. 63% of global pornography is consumed in Muslim states. The success of Islamist political parties in the 'Arab Winter' countries is not so surprising; ordinary Muslim voters have a growing intuition that Islam is entering a steep social, demographic, and religious decline. The demographic decline is the most startling, and totally new. Its economic and military decline is already well-known. Those who think that Islam is making some sort of comeback are sadly mistaken.

I agree with Phillips' analysis, but accelerating Islamic decline means Muslim societies will be even more violent and suicidal in coming years. In less than 20 years the Islamic world will be entering a demographic crisis vastly worse than its counterpart in the West. The world will lose 20% of its population as those who are die off are not replaced. We face a population collapse, and the demographics the Muslim world faces will be the worst by far. The only two nations in the industrialized world who have greater than 2.1 births per woman are America and Israel. How ironic that the world's two left-defined pariah states will likely be two in a very small club of nations that survive and prosper the coming troubles.

The current dysfunctionality of Muslim populatons, outside and inside the West, will escalate beyond belief in the next generation. Governments of developed countries should be doing everything in their power to slam the door on all future Islamic immigration, and efforts should be made to encourage Muslim emigraton from civilized states. Second, entitlements paid to Muslims should be slashed or revoked or put under severe limits. Islam's decline is causing Muslims to embrace Islamism. There is literally nothing the West can do to change the internal cultural dynamic of a rapidly decaying Islam.

When an islam sceptic or islam critic won't support a moderate islamist movement that person is really a islamophobic. The an-Nahda party of Tunisia is exactly what the muslim world needs to push back religious extremism. an-Nahda is more progressive and modern than the American republican part when it comes to abortion, women's rights and gay rights. failing to support such a reformist islamist movement would spell disaster for both the west and the muslim world. and if you don't believe Ghannouchi to be moderate, then tell me why he has been banned from both Iran and Saudi arabia?

I am at a loss to the West and especially the UK's thinking. Islam can not by it nature live along side other religions or democratic rule. We can see all over Europe Islam's attempts to take over by force in any area where Muslims have become dominant. The left's political apologists continue to enforce laws which allow Islam to threaten its opponents with either violence or the courts. Yet homosexuals, women and other faith should be mortally afraid of that which is being allowed to grow in our midst. Are we going mad, can anyone else see the threat?

Another good article. It certainly is another “Arc of Crisis” created by the west (Yanks Brits and the French) who's leaders are all out to lunch it seems. It's almost like they have a death wish.
Of course the new Libyan leaders are going to use Hilary's cash to buy more weapons, why would they want to seek and destroy those missing ones which will be miles away by now.

What is there to gain by manipulating the muslim countries to stay backward and regress even more thereby encouraging them to hate us and want to war with us even more?

And what's this compulsion to invoke Churchill? The stakes are very different: Muslims are not Nazis, and Britain does not have an empire to lose if it goes to war. I suppose if we're scrabbling for some comparison, our treatment of the "lesser races" might do, especially in the Middle East: he advocated gassing them and we blockade and bomb them. - And what justifies the inference: Islamist therefore existential threat to the West? The Saudis proselytise for a fairly extreme Wahabi dogma and, for whatever reason, funded al qaeda - yet we stuff them full of weaponry and they are second only to Israel in their access in Washington. Is Islamism really what determines the West's response to different regimes? I doubt it, since Islamism doesn't seem to be all that determines their policy towards us.

"Where, oh where is our Churchill?" He's long been buried under a different order of priorities, both of the electorate and the politicians: progressive ideological dogmas, consumerism and self-interest first, the country and its defence, last. With the economies of Europe falling apart, with her growing Muslim populations and with the increasing Islam militancy world over, this doesn't bode well for the future.

World war if Islamic parties win. Accurate? What practical response? Islamists don't like the Western values of freedom and liberal democracy we've so assiduously denied them (and want to continue to deny them unless their democracy gives us the "right" result). We'd now face democratic nationalism had we not preferred authoritarian stooges, and left Islamism the people's only alternative. So, either irrational hatred of our goodness or resentment at decades of oppression we sponsored. Does "world war" follow? Compare their weapons and resources with ours. They can cause us problems if we invade - but can they wage world war? And what is the proposed practical response? - more invasions, subversion, and oppression? Then there's anti-semitism and anti-Zionism - a threat to Israel? The risk it's said is the supply of weapons to Hamas - who can threaten terrorism and disobedience, but nothing more. What's a practical solution? Israel accept the Palestinians have rights to the land too, and not insist they accept self-governing squalor in isolated cantons - ie accept the settlement the international community, the Islamic states, the Arab states and the Palestinians accepted 40 years ago. Then squalid anti-Semitism and futile anti-Zionism in North Africa would be even more irrelevant than now.

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